Bell’s new helmet is most important innovation in concussion prevention

Concussion prevention

For schools and cities with motorcycle operations, you need to read this. Concussions and brain trauma have been a hot topic for years (because of football injuries) and the technology to prevent them has focused on reactive solutions – not proactive, preventative solutions. Just think about it – our solutions are monitor the impact with sensors, take kids out of the game, see a doctor, etc. But Bell Helmets just changed all that.

It’s about rotation

Helmets do a great job protecting the skull from cracking, but they have failed in one considerable way and that is in minimizing damage to the brain. Skull protection has been the main factor because of the standards that guide helmet manufacturers for the past years. Much like our playground standards (head injury) – we are focused on only one of the right factors and miss the other factors that cause significant damage.

What Bell did was focus on the real problem – rotational forces that cause brain injuries. Skull protection is great, but when you focus on protecting the skull you actually get the unintended consequence of brain injuries. That’s because the padding inside helmets absorbs the initial energy causing the brain to slam into the skull or spin inside the skull. This cause the brain to (in some cases) break away or detach from the vital connections in the skull. The skull remains protected but the brain suffers the consequence.

Bell designed its new helmet to have three separate layers of protection and one of them moves inside the helmet to absorb rotational impacts thus reducing the probability of concussion and other brain injuries significantly. Watch the below video to learn more about how the helmet works.

So what’s it all mean

While the helmet looks more like a motocross helmet, it may be worth the investment for cities and schools to provide their motorcades with these new brain buckets. Preventing a single brain injury will not only keep your employees happy, but it will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

I only hope that Bell shares their innovation with football helmet manufacturers.